


The Aluminium Aeroplane

by Adarog (RembrandtsWife)



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: Episode Related, F/M, Fairy Tale Elements, Fantasy, POV Inanimate Object, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-29
Updated: 2012-07-29
Packaged: 2017-11-10 23:13:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/471790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RembrandtsWife/pseuds/Adarog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The touch of hands, the sound of voices, and being loved will wake even an aeroplane to real life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Aluminium Aeroplane

**Author's Note:**

> For the third Festival of Fills at [](http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**cabinpres_fic**](http://cabinpres-fic.dreamwidth.org/). With apologies to a certain children's book. References episode 306, "St. Petersburg".

If you asked Martin Crieff whether he'd ever read a children's book called "The Velveteen Rabbit", he'd probably tell you he hadn't. If you showed him a copy of the book, with its distinctive cover painting of the titular animal, he'd probably feel some vague recognition. If you could put him in the TARDIS and let the Doctor take him back to his sixth year, he would find in his bedroom a copy of the book, which had been read to him by his grandmother, at the bottom of a stack of books about aeroplanes.

In a time he cannot consciously remember, somewhere in the transition between wanting to be an aeroplane and wanting to be an aeroplane *pilot*, Martin Crieff learned once and for ever the vital lesson of that well-known children's book: That a thing which is loved can become alive and a person in its own right.

Her official name is Golf Echo Romeo Tango India. Her first memory is of a sharp feminine voice by her left wing saying, "GERTI, eh? Well, Gertie, you're my jet now, and that's what we'll call this business: MJN, My Jet Now."

She heard her name, Gertie, and remembered it later. She began to wake up and to listen for that name when the pilots began to visit. The important thing about the pilots wasn't that they were men (not all of them were) or that they wore uniforms and hats with gold braid; it wasn't even that they talked about her, and sometimes talked to her; it was that they touched her. It was the touch of hands on her controls that really woke the plane up and began to change her from Golf Echo Romeo Tango India, property of MJN Air, to Gertie, a person in the making.

The change was a slow process. The sharp feminine voice helped, along with the touching hands of the pilot, because that voice, the voice of her mistress, was so strong and commanding. An aeroplane needs someone to command it as much as a dog needs a pack to belong to. But an aeroplane, like a plush rabbit or a musical instrument or indeed a human being, also needs someone as a mate, a friend, side by side in the chain of command. The first name that Gertie learned after her own was the name of Arthur, her steward. He really was *her* steward; he took care of *her*, and of her mistress, along with all the passengers and cargo she carried. He touched her, although not in the way that a pilot did, and perhaps more importantly, he spoke of her and to her by name, and he encouraged others to do so.

Passengers came and went. Pilots, too, came and went. Gertie drowsed between flights; her waking up was not inevitable, as the growth of a child is inevitable unless something critical interrupts it. It was less like the growth of a child or a plant than like the tending of a fire that was apt to go out unless carefully watched. There came a long stretch, as Gertie reckoned it, without pilots or passengers, a dreamless time during which Gertie crouched on the heavy earth and slept, no more than a hollow tube with ludicrous wings.

She might have slept forever if Her Pilots had not come. She woke a little at the sound of new voices, at the touch of new hands. Very soon they became Her Pilots, the ones she trusted, and she learnt their names: Douglas, whose voice made her fabric vibrate as if caressed, and Martin, whose hands... whose hands were the hands of a lover.

Douglas she trusted. She learnt of his affection for her, disguised though it sometimes was with scathing words. No matter what he said, the vibrations of his voice were soothing, comforting, encouraging, if sometimes severe. The more she awoke, the more she recognized the wisdom in his hands, the sureness of his experience. Douglas was hers just as Arthur was hers, and Mistress Carolyn, too.

But Martin... Gertie was his. Completely and utterly his. If she had been a woman, she would have said that to be touched by Martin was to be touched by a lover whose passion, whose devotion, whose undying loyalty made his clumsiness and inexperience beautiful. He had come to her a virgin, and he had learned from her body how to touch and be touched. The more Martin loved her, the more often he flew her, the more Gertie awoke, and the more Gertie awoke and a sense of her self ran through her frame, the more she loved Martin. She would do anything for him.

There came a terrible day and a night when Gertie thought she was doomed. Something crashed into her, one flying body into another, and one of her engines was destroyed. She was awake enough now to feel the loss as pain, to shiver and keen soundlessly as she sprawled on the ground and await her fate. She might never fly again. Her Pilots might never sit cradled in her lap and game over the cheese tray. Arthur might never again make messes in her galley. She could only hope that before she was ripped apart piece by piece, she would sleep and forget, forget that she had ever been a person.

The interloper who came terrified her. His voice made her shudder, his hands made her cringe. He was not a lover but a rapist, intent on stealing her from her companions and assaulting her until she was destroyed. If she could have screamed for help like a woman being carried away in a locked van, she would have screamed to wake a whole continent. She could do nothing. She was only a soulless tube of metal with one broken wing and one whole.

Yet Her Pilots came, and Arthur and Mistress, and drove the interloper away. Her injury was repaired, and she found the air again. She revelled in Douglas's triumphant tones, his possessive hands touching where the interloper had groped. She rejoiced to hear Arthur singing in her galley. And she longed for a word from Martin, her one true pilot, her only love.

Not until they had returned to her roost in Fitton did they have a moment together. The airfield was dark, all her human mates asleep when he entered the flight deck and laid shaking hands on her yoke.

"I thought I'd lost you," he said, so softly that Douglas wouldn't have heard him. "I thought I'd never fly again. And even if I--if you'd--we hadn't--and someone else had hired me--it wouldn't be the same." His hands brushed over her instruments; he touched his fingers to his lips and laid them on the console. "It wouldn't be the same if I weren't flying you."

Gertie wondered for a long moment whether she would be breaking any rules if she somehow responded. If she could just let Martin know that his love was returned--! She wasn't sure if it would be right.

Martin made a sputtering noise. "Listen to me--talking to a plane in the middle of the night. I must be barmy. But I couldn't sleep till I knew you were all right." He left the flight deck and walked away through the night before she could decide what to do.

That night Gertie dreamed for the first time. She dreamt of flying through a perfect sky, clear with only the thinnest and most beautiful clouds, with Martin in her lap. He laughed as she made the most daring manoeuvres, moving under his hands like a dancer in the tango, turn and dip, flourish and stamp. On the airfield in Fitton, Gertie dreamed of Martin, and in his attic bedroom across town, Martin dreamed of Gertie, and they dreamed the same dream.


End file.
